Unforgotten star Nicola Walker has made a surprising admission about working on her new series Alice and Steve on Disney+. In an exclusive interview with Reach Plc, the publishers of the Mirror, Walker revealed that during the shoot she thought her co-star had died and was laid out on a table.
The 56-year-old actor was referring to her canine co-star Mabel, who plays beloved pet pooch Crosby in Alice and Steve. Walker explained: “There’s a scene, where obviously something awful we think has happened to Crosby, and you can’t make a dog pretend to be dead. I think there are some, actually, that can do it. But Mabel couldn’t. So they made this prop, this prop dog. And the prop dog - I walked through set one day and I thought that Mabel was dead on a table. But they’d made this amazing, which as you got closer, you realised it was a rubberised dead dog.” Adding: “Really peculiar and it’s one of those days where you think, ‘This job is really odd’.”
Behind the Scenes with Mabel
Clement, 52, who worked closely with Mabel, also recounted how the dog had been taught to sneeze on command after a month of training. “To get a reward, she would sometimes sneeze and sometimes I’d have her on my chest and she would sneeze on my face. So, it wasn’t pleasant for me. But she was very popular amongst the rest of the cast,” he said.
The Flight of the Conchords star added: “For the rest of the cast, it was really funny when she sneezed on my face.” He went on to say: “I had to carry Mabel the dog who plays Crosby and I had to carry Nicola. It’s easier to carry Nicola, more co-operative.”
About Alice and Steve
Disney+ series Alice and Steve is being billed as an anti-romantic-comedy and comes from the mind of Sex Education and Rivals writer Sophie Goodhart, who delves into the most awkward of conundrums: what happens when your best friend starts dating your daughter? Walker stars as aggrieved mother Alice, who is left heartbroken to discover that her 26-year-old daughter Izzy (Yali Topol-Margalith) is in a relationship with her 50-something best friend Steve (Jermaine Clement). As Alice tries to separate the two, all hell breaks loose after Steve fights back and things escalate further than either of them could have imagined.
Alice and Steve premieres on Disney+ today.
